


love, crepes, and other culinary advances

by theinkwell33



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Asexuality, Aziraphale cooks, Cooking, Fluff, Food, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Love expressed through homemade meals, Love is poison to demons, M/M, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Pre-Apocalypse, smol angst, soft, unspoken feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-27 09:17:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21116387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theinkwell33/pseuds/theinkwell33
Summary: Aziraphale once promised Crowley he'd never poison him. However, he has been unknowingly breaking that promise for nearly six thousand years.  All he really wanted to do was pour his heart out into some homemade recipes, but it turns out baking love into a meal is exactly how one poisons a demon.





	love, crepes, and other culinary advances

**Author's Note:**

> Written as part of a prompt challenge collection.

It took a long time before Aziraphale noticed a pattern.

In the old days, he used to cook quite frequently. It was useful for getting to know people, and, if you were an enterprising angel with an assignment to complete, it was often effective for influencing humans toward the light. After all, lots of friendships, partnerships, and business transactions were initiated this way, and Aziraphale had a knack for getting people to share a meal, either with him or with each other. 

As the cook, Aziraphale was in the perfect position to bridge relationships. He had it down to a science. And that’s really all cooking was to him, really. Chemistry. Put something on to simmer with some oil and garlic, add some herbs and spices, pour the wine, introduce good company, and there you were, an evening made.

Things became a little different when Aziraphale began cooking for Crowley. The first time he did it, he put a little more effort into the loaf of rosemary bread he was baking. A little bit of extra _ something _, and it rose spectacularly. 

When Aziraphale managed to get the loaf to Crowley with a small wheel of soft cheese and a jar of homemade cherry jam, it was during a covert meeting in St. James’ Park. Neither he nor Crowley had been in London all that long, but it already felt like neutral ground, or perhaps home, for them.

“What is that?” Crowley demanded when Aziraphale held out the small wicker basket. “Did you…make this?”

“I did,” he said proudly. “For you.”

Crowley took the basket, then gave him an unrecognizable look that might have been either impressed or startled. Then he smiled. “Thank you. ‘S not poisoned, is it?”

“Gracious, no.”

“Can never be too careful, took me a whole decade to come back after my last discorporation. And they took away my cubicle down there, so I’d have to stand the whole time I’m waiting.”

“I’d never poison you,” Aziraphale promised. “Never have, never will.”

His sincerity clearly took Crowley by surprise, because the demon turned a strange shade of pink. He tilted his massive top hat, took the basket, and muttered, “Yeah, all right.”

A month later, they met on the park bench at dawn. Crowley returned the basket with perplexed indifference. “Don’t know how I ended up with your basket, angel. Anyway, here you go.”

Aziraphale folded up his newspaper. “Did you like the jam and bread?”

“Mm?” hummed Crowley. He appeared to be distracted by a duck mutiny that had begun a few paces away.

Aziraphale mistakenly interpreted this answer as a yes. But, in reality, Crowley had no idea what the angel was talking about.

See, what Aziraphale didn’t know was that Crowley hadn’t been affirming his enjoyment, he’d been asking,_ “__What _jam and bread?”

Crowley remembered nothing of baked goods, rosemary, or even the tartness of preserved cherries. He’d certainly tasted them, of course. The message had been received and fully understood. It was obvious what Aziraphale had been trying to say with this little gift. Crowley had, after partaking in the bread with gusto, thought out his reciprocation of this message once he was alone in his flat. 

But before he could voice anything, a horrible, prickly feeling had crept over him until he was quite unwell. His fever continued through the night, and only broke once the entire memory of the event, all those feelings and responses, had burned away with the early morning fog.

And so, their first mutual, wordless confession of feelings was utterly forgotten. This was the first time Aziraphale’s cooking was the catalyst. But it wasn’t the last.

* * *

A series of similar occasions followed over the years, but never anything odd enough to give Aziraphale more than a moment’s pause. The only thing that came close was around the time of the French Revolution. After the Bastille debacle, Aziraphale finally succeeded in replicating the recipe for his favorite crepes and miracled a batch to where Crowley was stationed in Italy. The note said, _ Consider it a thank you. _

He was forced to presume the crepes must have gotten lost in celestial transit, though, because Crowley never mentioned receiving them and, when asked, seemed rather put out that he’d missed the opportunity to be the first demon honored with a crepe manifestation in his own home.

“I think I’d remember if crepes showed up at my place, angel. My lot certainly don’t make a habit of sending me stuff like_ that _.”

“Of course, dear,” had been Aziraphale’s only reply.

It was only after the whole church business in the forties that Aziraphale really started to suspect something was wrong.

A week after the bombing, Aziraphale invited Crowley over for a modest dinner, to say thank you for saving his books. It was the least he could do, after all. It was a difficult time in history, and there wasn’t much in the way of good ingredients where they were, but Aziraphale still did his best to make it special. It didn’t feel right to use miracles for this, but he did add his usual extra _ something _ to his preparations.

Crowley was truly appreciative, and throughout the meal he leaned more and more across the table, like a plant reaching for the most sunlight it could find. But after the dishes had been cleared and the taste of stale crackers had been washed away with a diluted pot of tea, Crowley stood abruptly to leave.

“Where are you going, dear boy?” Aziraphale asked, surprised.

“I should go. Feel sort of…ill.” Crowley was already putting on his hat and coat. His face had turned strange shade, as if it couldn’t decide whether to be pale or flushed.

“Ill?” Aziraphale couldn’t keep the alarm out of his voice.

“Yeah. Sometimes when we eat together, I feel a little _ off _ afterward.”

“I’m…I’m terribly sorry. Is there anything I can do?”

Crowley waved him off and opened the door. “Nah, don’t worry ‘bout it. I’ll be fine. Bye, angel.” He exited, then poked his sunglassed face back into view again to say, “Thanksss,” before departing.

Aziraphale didn’t hear from Crowley at all the following day. When he went to the demon’s tiny little flat to check on him, no one answered. On his way back home that rainy afternoon, however, Aziraphale bumped into Crowley on the street.

“Oh! My dear, how are you feeling?”

“Eh?” Crowley frowned, bemused. “Never better. Why?”

“Last night, at dinner, you said you felt ill.”

“Dinner? Angel, I haven’t seen you in a week at _ least _. Did that bomb rattle you too much?”

“No, of course not.”

“Right, well. Got to go. See you around, Aziraphale.” With a small pat on the angel’s shoulder, Crowley disappeared down the next alley.

Aziraphale stared after him, as if expecting Crowley to come back. How could he have forgotten about their dinner? What was happening to his dear friend?

“You’ll forget your own head, next,” he murmured.

* * *

After a few years of puzzling through what might have been the cause of Crowley’s predicament (because let’s be realistic, Aziraphale was far too good a cook to actually give anyone real food poisoning), the angel got an idea. He tested it a few times, tracking hypotheses and results.

He tried:

  1. Bringing Crowley some takeaway,
  2. Going to a restaurant together,
  3. Having someone else cook something from his recipe, and
  4. Cooking something on his own and bringing it over.

They were experiments; this was chemistry. Logical and scientific and important. Anything else was pure curiosity, he told himself as he dedicated a chalkboard in the bookshop’s back room to chronicling his research. It had _ nothing _ to do with the culinary coded messages he’d been sending Crowley’s way. They were more layered than his best attempt at baklava, but this whole situation had nothing to do with _ feelings, _ surely.

He didn’t want to keep cooking for Crowley if the gesture was always forgotten somehow. Or, rather, he _ would _ continue cooking for Crowley, of course, but he didn’t _ want _to if it was always going to be like this. If pressed, he’d say there was no reason to hurt himself again. You couldn’t shout at a wall and expect it to shout back, even after all those years of sending it crepes and hoping it might respond. First, Aziraphale was realizing, you needed to break down the wall.

The results of his experiments ended up written out in a well-organized data table on Aziraphale’s chalkboard. As he dusted off his chalky hands and watched the motes dance in a nearby sunbeam, he considered his options. 

The conclusions were as follows:

  1. Crowley recalled having takeaway and, over the next several days, continued to offer a deluge of criticism regarding its quality. Delivery was not the issue.
  2. He remembered the restaurants, but forgot the meal itself if Aziraphale was the one who paid. 
  3. When Aziraphale convinced an acquaintance to make something with his provided recipe, Crowley raved about the meal for days and hadn’t forgotten a thing. So, the recipe itself was not the problem, either.
  4. Crowley had no memory whatsoever of consuming anything Aziraphale had personally cooked. He didn’t just forget the meal itself, but also the entire span of time in which the meal took place. All conversation, all locations, everything.

And then, one day, Aziraphale was setting himself the Sisyphean task of making Crowley another roast that he was just going to forget eating anyway, it finally occurred to him.

The revelation was so strong he actually dropped the bundle of carrots he was transporting to his cutting board. He stared down at them, splayed on the tile floor of his tiny kitchen, and picked them up guiltily. He then noticed the glinting knife on the cutting board and thought about curses and blame and faults. 

He desperately hoped he was wrong, but angels don’t get _ hunches _ , and they are hardly ever _ wrong _ . They get ideas, which usually turn out to be the right ones. But right does not mean _ nice _.

Every meal Aziraphale made with his own hands was one Crowley forgot he’d ever tasted. Anything Aziraphale poured a little extra _ something _ into. Everything made with more than just ingredients and fire and time.

Every meal made with _ love _.

“Oh, dear,” Aziraphale apologized to the fallen carrots, as if they could absolve him. “How foolish I’ve been.” He packed everything back up into the refrigerator as if the ingredients were deadly chemicals, and reserved a table for two at the Ritz for that evening instead. He had some explaining to do. After all, he’d been unwittingly poisoning his friend with love for almost six thousand years, something he once promised he’d never do.

* * *

That night, Aziraphale explained his conclusions to Crowley over some wine and a lovely dinner, and the implications lingered among the piano’s swirling eddies of music. Crowley was quietly appalled at the news and mulled on it for most of their main course. By dessert, however, he finally decided to display how upset he truly was by stabbing a fork into the tiramisu. He picked up a piece, stared at it with a stricken expression, gave up on it, and then made a strangled noise.

“All these years,” he started. “Six thousand years, and you thought I just callously never remarked on your cooking? I would _ never _ do that. I just can’t remember it. At all. No matter how much I want to.”

“You’re a demon, I didn’t realize you could be concerned about being rude.” 

“’S not the point,” he waved his hand. “Look. My point is. 'S not fair I can’t remember.”

“It's not your fault. We both know now what I was trying to say with all the cooking anyway. I’d rather you remember _ that _ than have you taste and forget, Crowley.”

“Ngh. Yeah. But all the times I _ did _ forget what you were trying to say. Spent so long thinking you didn’t care. That _ hurtsss _.”

“We can’t go back in time, what’s done is done, I’m afraid. But we can look to the future. Just. Carefully.”

When the bill came, Crowley took the check without hesitation and paid it, denting the pad with his angry scrawl. 

Aziraphale offered his thanks and sighed. “Still, it is a shame, I had so many recipes I wanted you to try. I wanted your opinion on stuffed peppers. And salmon. And mushroom risotto."

“Look. I don’t want to forget a single thing more,” Crowley reasoned, “but that doesn’t mean we can’t figure out another way to make this work.”

The angel pushed the plate of tiramisu toward Crowley and leaned in. “Oh?”

They made a plan. Cuisine was absolutely Aziraphale’s love language, and food made with love was certainly Crowley’s unique brand of poison, but there _ were _ some options available to them still. Aziraphale wouldn’t cook, and if he did make something, Crowley wouldn’t eat it. Crowley would always pay the bill at restaurants; Aziraphale would in turn popularize the concept of a potluck for Crowley’s sake. 

The two of them were good at finding these loopholes, and find them they did.

Much of time going forward passed without incident. Memories were chronicled, delicacies were savored. And, if some of Aziraphale’s perfected scone recipes found their way onto the menu at the tea shop Crowley liked, nobody else had to know. A few degrees of separation never hurt anyone, especially when clotted cream, homemade cherry jam, and unspoken truths were at stake.

Besides, Crowley and Aziraphale came to agree, there was something special about a meal that someone has gone to the trouble of making unforgettable.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Find me on tumblr [@splitting-infinities](https://splitting-infinities.tumblr.com).


End file.
